andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2011-09-07 11:14 am

You can rent them by the yard

Just to be entirely clear, we're talking about _ebooks_ here.

[Poll #1776583]

Re:

[identity profile] steer.livejournal.com 2011-09-07 02:26 pm (UTC)(link)
This is known in psychology/behavioural modelling circles as "bounded rationality". In complex decision making people will often trade (sometimes considerable) sums of money to avoid a more complex decision process. They make an "irrational" (in the economic sense) decision because the "rational" decision is difficult. I am sometimes a victim of it despite myself: a typical example would be:
If I shopped around for an hour and did some working out I could save £5 a month on my mobile bill (guestimate) but I can't be fagged, some part of my brain is saying "it's only a fiver"... although over the two years of the contract I have wasted £120 which is considerable and certainly worth doing an hour or two of work to obtain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality

[identity profile] steer.livejournal.com 2011-09-07 03:51 pm (UTC)(link)
That is the very essence of bounded rationality and at that point it is "rational" in the human if not the economic sense (which in classical economics does not account for the cost of actually making the calculations required to make an economically efficient decision).

[identity profile] steer.livejournal.com 2011-09-07 04:18 pm (UTC)(link)
You may have heard the story about the mathematician looking for his car keys under a street light. A passer by asks him if he could point out more precisely where he dropped them. The mathematician points to a place tens of metres away and says "but I can't look over there, it's too dark."

The theories we have may not be worth the paper they are published on but they are quite definitely those theories which are most accessible.

[To be fair there are non-equilibrium theories of decision making accounting for bounded rationality -- they're just MUCH MUCH more difficult.]